Jacob Olupona
· Professor of African Religious Traditions, Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies in the Faculty of Arts and SciencesHarvard University · African and African American Studies
Active 1982–2025
Academic metrics are sourced from OpenAlex and public funding records; values may differ from Google Scholar.
About
Jacob Olupona is the Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and Professor of African Religious Traditions at Harvard University. He is also the Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. Olupona studied at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and earned his PhD in Comparative Religion from Boston University in 1983. His scholarly work focuses on African religious traditions, with a particular interest in the growth of evangelicalism across all branches of Christianity within Nigerian society. He is working on a groundbreaking study that expands the discourse beyond Pentecostalism to explore its impact and role in Nigerian Christianity and society. Olupona has authored and edited numerous books, including works on Yoruba festivals, the urban mixing of ritual and social structures in Ile-Ife, and the tradition of Ifa divination, analyzing its theology, art, philosophy, and cultural significance. His research explores how religious beliefs and practices permeate daily life and societal structures. He has received prestigious grants from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Olupona has served on editorial boards of influential journals and was the president of the African Association for the Study of Religion. He has been honored with an honorary doctorate in divinity from the University of Edinburgh, and honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Obafemi…
Research topics
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- Philosophy
- Gender studies
- Aesthetics
- Epistemology
- History
- Religious studies
- Archaeology
- Art
Selected publications
2022-02-14 · 12 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAt the core of Yorùbá religious thought and practice is the idea and practice of secrecy, called awo. Babalawo, custodians of the Ifa divination practice, are regarded as the masters of the sacred esoteric tradition. The understanding and acquisition of deep knowledge and practices of all forms of Yorùbá tradition entail significant secrecy. The practice of secrecy enables traditions to distinguish between devotees and outsiders and to create the needed aura of sacredness for a very few cust…
Religions and Social Progress: Critical Assessments and Creative Partnerships
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2018-07-05 · 12 citations
book-chapterA summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Duke University Press eBooks · 2020 · 11 citations
1st authorCorrespondingAffective Trajectories explores affective and emotional experiences as manifestations of religion in the rapidly shifting conditions of postcolonial African urban spaces and the diaspora. The editors define the term "affective trajectory" as the force of affect in the religious lives of individuals and communities; it is a network of people, religious forces, and material places that are established, dissolved, and remade, and a mode of articulating time-space coordinates that include, for insta…
Owner of the Day and Regulator of the Universe:
University of Arizona Press eBooks · 2022-08-23 · 6 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingReligion and Indigenous Hermeneutics
Journal of Africana Religions · 2014-10-01 · 6 citations
articleAbstract Jacob Olupona's City of 201 Gods critically engages the question of interpretation and understanding in the analysis of specific African lifeworlds (re)defined by religious culture. Olupona's interpretation invites further interpretation of how emergent symbolic forms in a context of plural religious practices provoke both consensus and dissensus with respect to secularist practices.
Frequent coauthors
- 48 shared
Marian Burchardt
Leipzig University
- 27 shared
Dianne M. Stewart
Emory University
- 26 shared
Terrence L. Johnson
- 16 shared
Astrid Dilger
Harvard University Press
- 16 shared
Marian Bochow
Harvard University Press
- 16 shared
Matthew Wilhelm‐Solomon
- 16 shared
Matthew Burchardt
Harvard University Press
- 16 shared
Hansjörg Dilger
Education
- 2000
Ph.D., African Religious Traditions
Harvard University
- 1994
M.A., Religious Studies
University of Ibadan
- 1990
B.A., Religious Studies
University of Ibadan
Awards & honors
- Nigerian National Order of Merit (2008)
- Inducted into the Nigerian Academy of Letters (2015)
- Reimar Lust Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,…
- Honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh
- Honorary Doctor of Letters from Obafemi Awolowo University
Similar researchers at Harvard University
- Resume-aware match score
- Save to shortlist
- AI-drafted outreach
See your match with Jacob Olupona
PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.
- Free to start
- No credit card
- 30-second signup